


tales of CP9

by narramin



Category: One Piece
Genre: CP9 - Freeform, Drabble Collection, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, this is where im gonna stash all my short CP9 hoe stuff in the future is what I'm saying
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:42:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22227325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narramin/pseuds/narramin
Summary: A series of drabbles about our favourite One Piece Bondesque-villians.Pairings and details are speficied in the chapter titles and notes. Rating will definitely go up in the future.They are a tight-knit group of ruthless murderers with hearts sworn to Justice and Justice alone, be it during the five years they spent as wolves in sheeps' clothing or the thrill of a bloody night doing the government's dirty work. They've known each other all their lives, which might not matter when it comes to duty — but that doesn't mean that they don't care, even if only a little.
Relationships: Paulie/Rob Lucci
Comments: 11
Kudos: 36





	tales of CP9

The first day is alright: there’s too much occupying Paulie’s mind to have room to wallow in self-pity. Wounds to bandage, a boss to make sure no one still wants to murder and a bunch of starving and exhausted kid pirates to feed and give a bed to sleep in to. So, Paulie’s plenty busy, thank you very much. 

He himself ended up passing out on Iceburg’s couch, jacket still on with the ropes twisting up his sleeve and he wakes up tangled in them, choking for air. Iceburg gives him a worried look in the kitchen when he finds him chugging coffee straight out of the pot that morning, but says nothing, for which Paulie is eternally grateful. Even the bitter coffee can’t mask the taste of bile in his mouth when rushes out of the door.

He does a good job distracting himself —at first. He’s had good practice at the art of ignoring his life’s problems with the good old tried methods of looking at the bottom of a bottle, or working himself till he’s dead on his feet.

It’s the latter, for now, so he spends most of the day running around in Dock One fixing lumber cargos that got delayed due to certain traitorous bastards and bootlicking hitman pussycats. Leaving without a letter of resignation, but with a murder attempt and a broken heart, one that Paulie will never ever admit to in their wake.

Maybe he should have known better than to go to the docks and expect getting to bury himself in his work, but, again, when it comes to avoiding misery, denial is a key that doesn’t fit the lock. 

“Hey man,” Gall, a young employee with a shock of red hair rushes by, carrying a sandpaper-kit. “you seen Lucci today? He oughta have estimated those logs by now. Don’t tell me that bastard got sick and left me hanging.” 

Paulie goes very, very still. A faint voice in his head supplies that Gall’s just got back from a leave and he remembers—

_— there was only one time when Lucci had to call in sick in the five years they knew each other. Paulie was still nineteen and an idiot, grappling with his hots for the new, quiet guy with the sooty dark lashes and hair, the man that Iceburg’d just recently hired. Rob Lucci had the ability to make him sweat with one searing look that Paulie both hated and loved and could also kick any trigger-happy pirate clean through a brick wall: something of an awakening for his younger self. So he did his best to always get drunk with someone else, lest he accidentally fell into bed with him, some freaky but hot puppet speaker—_

— ” Hey, man, are you alright? You got so pale, is it something serious—”

_— But there was only so much one could do to avoid Lucci, working with the man. Trying and failing not to steal glances at the set of his broad shoulders and mysterious scars peeking out from under his tank top._

_That day, his focus on a messy caulking job, Paulie missed the ‘WATCH OUT !’ that rang through the yard, and only remembers the feel of a stone wall slamming into him, sending him flying to taste the shipyard dirt. Kaku yelling ‘Jolly hell’ when he jumped off the roof to rush to Lucci’s still, crumpled form on the ground, a pool of blood forming where Paulie himself had been standing a moment ago._

_Lucci’s eyes were bleary and half-focused on Paulie as Hattori said, in a shaky voice, “P- aulie? I’m glad t-that—” before he passed out, the metal bolt that’d fallen from the crane laying bloody by his head. Paulie recited every single swear word he knew back and forth till the medics arrived._

_It was by the hospital bed Paulie kissed him for the first time, after spending the night not dozing off on a plastic chair, both cursing and thanking his luck. Lucci’s head wound was miraculously, wondrously just a scratch, instead of his brains painting the sawdust covering the shipyard pink and red._

_Lucci kissed him back rough, with the air of a yearning man._

_“You — bastard!” Paulie muttered with a trembling voice, still cupping Lucci’s pale face. “What the hell did you think when you—_ ”

— and Paulie knows, with a sudden, cold and nauseating clarity exactly what Lucci thought that day. He doesn’t have to wonder if Lucci really saved his life. Not after he’s seen the man move, really _move_ , almost killing someone with a finger that could have oh so easily scratched a wound on his own scalp. With an accomplice that could have loosened that bolt _just right_ , and with reflexes good enough just to barely avoid the hit...

Gall’s talking to him still, voice growing more and more frantic. Concerned. 

Paulie will leave him without saying a single word. He will go home the first time since his eyes were brutally opened to the ugly truth, and he will march into his apartment with a fake, puffed up confidence he only puts up for himself; a confidence that will still crumble.

He will find Lucci’s favourite — _or was that a lie, too_ _—_ mug on the windowsill, and he will throw it out of the window with a raw, guttural sound in his throat, and it will shatter on a street lamp dead-on. He will later, on his drunken way home, tread on some of the broken shreds without even noticing.

The only thing he will notice that night is how his bed smells like a devil of a man that Paulie will never see or think about again. 

He will end up sleeping curled on the hard, wooden floor, then. For the first time of the many nights to come.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> me, hand waving out of the hole of resigned shame and loneliness that is the essence of being a CP9 stan: hey wassup
> 
> @narramin on tumblr and twitter if y'all wanna hit me up and suffer this fate with me Xoxo


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